Firefox 16 adds more developer muscle, but Mac OS features lag

A new dev toolbar and command line for Firefox, but Lion gestures are AWOL.

Mozilla has announced the public availability of Firefox 16, the latest version of its open-source web browser. While this version is light on new features that most users will notice—and missing some features many faithful users have been expecting—there are some major additions under the hood that will make Firefox 16 a better platform for developing apps for both the desktop browser and mobile web.

As we've reported, Firefox 15 included a whole host of user experience features, including some impressive support for web-based gaming. Firefox 16 is focused more on pushing forward the browser's support for advanced Cascading Style Sheets features and HTML 5 programming interfaces, as well as a pair of web APIs suited specifically to tablets and mobile devices. There's also a new feature of the browser that will appeal to both developers and power users: a command line that drives many of the browser's internal tools.

Underneath, there's a performance tweak to the garbage collection in Firefox's JavaScript engine. There's also a new security feature rolled out in Firefox 16, called "opt-in activation," that will allow Mozilla to reach out and configure users' browsers to prompt them to allow out-of-date or known vulnerable browser plug-ins from running.

But what's missing from Firefox 16 is just as important—or perhaps more important—than what made it into this release. Firefox 16 still (at least officially) lacks a built-in PDF reader—while reading PDFs is supported through a browser add-in, the internal reader is still experimental. And more notably for Mac users, a whole raft of bug fixes for support of Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion have missed release—without any indication of when they'll finally be rolled in.

By your command

The Developer Command Line is integrated into Firefox's new Developer Toolbar, which also gives users quick access to Firefox's integrated Web console, JavaScript debugger, and page element inspection tools. Normally out of view, the toolbar can be summoned by pressing the Shift and F2 keys.

Enlarge/ The command line box in Firefox 16, indicated by the arrow, allows developers and power-users to quickly access key features of the browser's development environment and settings.

The commands are all documented within the Command Line's own help system. In addition, as you type into the Command Line bar, Firefox autocompletes commands, and offers syntactic help in completing them.

Each of the developer tools that are launchable from the Developer Toolbar are also fully wired into the command line, so developers can keep their fingers on the keyboard, using text commands to launch and manipulate the Web console and JavaScript debugger, to configure break points in JavaScript code, and make changes to various attributes of the page they're working on. The command line can also be used with the Inspector to launch specific views of the page contents—such as the 3D "Tilt" visualization of a page's elements, which can be opened and rotated from the command line.

There are some features of the command line tool that will be useful to non-developers as well. You can also use the command line to list and clear cookies, change the settings for browser add-ons, restart the browser, and even take screenshots of a browser page.

Changes under the hood

The major performance improvement in Firefox 16 is the introduction of incremental garbage collection. Firefox's JavaScript engine previously collected memory from scripts that were no longer running in big, long-running blocks; now it performs the culling in smaller segments to avoid a performance hit.

Out-of-date plugins (such as Flash players, for example) have long been a weak point in browser security. In Firefox 14, Mozilla introduced a feature that allowed users to configure all plug-ins to require user authorization to launch, called "click to play," that would at least allow security-conscious users to know when a web page was trying to execute content in one of them. The "click-to-play" feature isn't exactly something that is easily configured by an average user right now—it's buried in the about:config advanced configuration screen accessible through the browser itself.

Enlarge/ An example of a blocked plug-in—Flash on the YouTube homepage.

The opt-in feature has been extended in Firefox 16 to allow Mozilla to remotely configure "click to play" for specific plug-ins based on information from their developers. This isn't a feature users can configure—it's specifically wired into Mozilla's update system.

For example, in the event of a Flash player vulnerability, Adobe could pass an alert through Mozilla to users, prompting users when a site tries to launch the plug-in with an alert—essentially nagging them until they update the out-of-date software, while giving them the opportunity to avoid malicious content in the meantime. A similar feature is already part of Google Chrome.

What's missing for Mac OS X?

While the inline PDF reader is currently slotted for Firefox 18—which will likely be released before the end of the year—the Mac OS X fixes have dropped completely off Mozilla's release tracking radar. Some of the issues have been resolved, such as the use of Lion's (and Mountain Lion's) native scrollbars, and support for full-screen mode (though I experienced some bugs in full screen support when using it on a MacBook with a second, external monitor).

Also, Firefox 16 finally adds support for the VoiceOver voice-assisted navigation feature in Mac OS X, allowing users to navigate through content from their keyboard and describing content by voice as it's moused over. But other interface elements, such as support for multitouch gestures like pinching to zoom in and out (already supported on Firefox's mobile browser) and the three-finger double-tap to bring up a dictionary definition of a word), remain untouched.

The same is true for the swiping gesture for moving back and forth through history, as is supported in Safari. (Chrome supports these gestures, but without the animation used by other applications.)

Mac interface purists holding out for those features won't be happy anytime soon. That's because the bug requests to make Firefox more Lion-friendly haven't even been assigned yet. Considering there's a whole new set of gesture-based fixes that will be needed to support Windows 8, it's not likely they'll be getting much priority.

Promoted Comments

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

When someone asks why Firefox isn't picking up in OS X, it's because they're not doing anything to attract users. Firefox will be a second-rate browser on the Mac because that's all Mozilla wants to make.

Usually when a business wants to expand into an existing market, it works hard to attract that market. If they don't care to do that, then they'll be an also-ran.

They're still working to attract users even on the Windows platform. They don't have any lack of potential users there even to this day. There's a reason the Windows platform is the Priority 1 for development. You can argue about it and hate it all day but it's simple cold hard logic. They devote the most resources to the platform with the most users.

Firefox used to be my go-to browser on my Macs and my PCs. It was especially useful for viewing sites on the Mac that seemed to be coded on Windows for Windows. Except for the insecure ActiveX garbage, Firefox made IE-targeted sites work well on the Mac. Of course, on the PC, Firefox was/is the more secure choice.

As web sites moved away from IE-specific coding, and toward open standards, Firefox became less necessary, and Safari became universally useful. And then came Chrome, as well.

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.) That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period. That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Looks to me like they're sinking all their brainpower into the Firefox Mobile OS. I guess because Meego needs a competitor. Or something.

As a Firefox Mac user I applaud the last section, it matches my frustrations perfectly. I was confused by the title however as I thought that the browser "featured" lag (ZOMG WTF LAG!!). This didn't match with my experience as Firefox Mac has gotten significant speedups over the last 6-12 months.

IGC is a really huge improvement. I was screwing around with the Beta and Aurora versions just to test it out and it really makes a colossal difference. It's an addition that's been long in the making but I'm glad it's finally landed.

I'm surprised that in browser PDF support is considered a feature. I prefer files to load in separate applications typically. Maybe they are doing something completely different but with the way current PDF readers do in-line reading I keep getting confused I'm in my browser when I'm looking at a PDF because all the browser navigation changes. Additionally, all the features are hidden to the point it's actually hard to read a lot of PDFs easily.

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

When someone asks why Firefox isn't picking up in OS X, it's because they're not doing anything to attract users. Firefox will be a second-rate browser on the Mac because that's all Mozilla wants to make.

Usually when a business wants to expand into an existing market, it works hard to attract that market. If they don't care to do that, then they'll be an also-ran.

I'm surprised that in browser PDF support is considered a feature. I prefer files to load in separate applications typically. Maybe they are doing something completely different but with the way current PDF readers do in-line reading I keep getting confused I'm in my browser when I'm looking at a PDF because all the browser navigation changes. Additionally, all the features are hidden to the point it's actually hard to read a lot of PDFs easily.

The interface does not completely change, as the PDF reader is pdf.js. It is just a webpage with the PDF in it.

I'm surprised that in browser PDF support is considered a feature. I prefer files to load in separate applications typically. Maybe they are doing something completely different but with the way current PDF readers do in-line reading I keep getting confused I'm in my browser when I'm looking at a PDF because all the browser navigation changes. Additionally, all the features are hidden to the point it's actually hard to read a lot of PDFs easily.

It sounds like whatever browser you're using has really shit support for PDF.

Of course an external application is better if your browser's PDF support is bad. But a lot of browsers (eg: safari and chrome) have extremely good built in support for PDF files, as long as you avoid installing adobe's "official" plugin. And jumping to an external PDF viewer is usually just one click away.

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

When someone asks why Firefox isn't picking up in OS X, it's because they're not doing anything to attract users. Firefox will be a second-rate browser on the Mac because that's all Mozilla wants to make.

Usually when a business wants to expand into an existing market, it works hard to attract that market. If they don't care to do that, then they'll be an also-ran.

They're still working to attract users even on the Windows platform. They don't have any lack of potential users there even to this day. There's a reason the Windows platform is the Priority 1 for development. You can argue about it and hate it all day but it's simple cold hard logic. They devote the most resources to the platform with the most users.

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

I had a good rage about the state of affairs back when I was a Mac user but having been informed of the number of issues that Apple refuses to fix then it appears the problem resides with Apple and their refusal to fix long standing bugs in the OS rather than laziness on the part of Mozilla developers. End of the day Microsoft bends over backwards to accommodate developers and fix bugs promptly where as it seems with Apple they have the attitude of, "well you should be bloody grateful we even allow you to develop for Mac OS X!"

As for Adobe, here is an example of what has happened:

Adobe: "hey Microsoft we really need some API's that allow us to improve speed and reliability - can you help us?"Microsoft: "no problems bro, lets work together to find a solution to the problem".

Adobe: "hey Google, we really want the experience on Chrome to be top notch, may we work with you on Pepper extensions".Google: "no problems dude, we're not wrapped up in politics, we just want the thing to work for the customer"

Adobe: "hey Apple, we really want to improve the experience on MacOS X, are you able to help us by providing certain low level API's so we can achieve that?"Apple: "Fuck you!"Adobe: "pardon?"Apple: "Fuck you, and fuck your Flash, h264/AAC/HTML5 is the future! bo yah!"Adobe: "But those technologies are limited at the moment"Apple: "Fuck you! stop annoying us, we're trying to change the world!"

Firefox on the Mac has some features that are very handy and lacking in Safari. I can choose my own search engines, and then mark a word and have it looked up in that search engine on FF. Also, the arrow keys work in Google Street View, which makes navigation so much easier there. Enough reasons for me to stay on FF for now.

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

When someone asks why Firefox isn't picking up in OS X, it's because they're not doing anything to attract users. Firefox will be a second-rate browser on the Mac because that's all Mozilla wants to make.

Usually when a business wants to expand into an existing market, it works hard to attract that market. If they don't care to do that, then they'll be an also-ran.

They're still working to attract users even on the Windows platform. They don't have any lack of potential users there even to this day. There's a reason the Windows platform is the Priority 1 for development. You can argue about it and hate it all day but it's simple cold hard logic. They devote the most resources to the platform with the most users.

Firefox used to be my go-to browser on my Macs and my PCs. It was especially useful for viewing sites on the Mac that seemed to be coded on Windows for Windows. Except for the insecure ActiveX garbage, Firefox made IE-targeted sites work well on the Mac. Of course, on the PC, Firefox was/is the more secure choice.

As web sites moved away from IE-specific coding, and toward open standards, Firefox became less necessary, and Safari became universally useful. And then came Chrome, as well.

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.) That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period. That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Looks to me like they're sinking all their brainpower into the Firefox Mobile OS. I guess because Meego needs a competitor. Or something.

I had a good rage about the state of affairs back when I was a Mac user but having been informed of the number of issues that Apple refuses to fix then it appears the problem resides with Apple and their refusal to fix long standing bugs in the OS rather than laziness on the part of Mozilla developers. End of the day Microsoft bends over backwards to accommodate developers and fix bugs promptly where as it seems with Apple they have the attitude of, "well you should be bloody grateful we even allow you to develop for Mac OS X!"

What Apple bugs are preventing Mozilla from having native scrollbars and gesture support?

The lack of gestures is very annoying, especially this late in the game. But, I'm really waiting on native HiDPI support. Things are way too blurry for me to comfortably read/view in FF on my Retina MBP, and having to keep changing settings whenever there's an update is tedious.

I had a good rage about the state of affairs back when I was a Mac user but having been informed of the number of issues that Apple refuses to fix then it appears the problem resides with Apple and their refusal to fix long standing bugs in the OS rather than laziness on the part of Mozilla developers. End of the day Microsoft bends over backwards to accommodate developers and fix bugs promptly where as it seems with Apple they have the attitude of, "well you should be bloody grateful we even allow you to develop for Mac OS X!"

What Apple bugs are preventing Mozilla from having native scrollbars and gesture support?

The craziest thing about Mozilla's Mac support is that Keychain Services Integration, the only thing that let me start using Firefox again after years (although Safari is still my main browser), is still a third-party extension that you have to find and install yourself.

Mac users have been clamoring for Keychain support for 11 years, and the bug is still marked as NEW and Assigned To: Nobody. After many false starts, it took a third party developer to implement this feature as an extension, and still Mozilla can't even be bothered to merge the code into Firefox. Until they start fixing the decades-old bugs, I just can't take their Mac support seriously.

Mac users have been clamoring for Keychain support for 11 years, and the bug is still marked as NEW and Assigned To: Nobody. After many false starts, it took a third party developer to implement this feature as an extension, and still Mozilla can't even be bothered to merge the code into Firefox. Until they start fixing the decades-old bugs, I just can't take their Mac support seriously.

Agreed. Keychain is there, it has what I assume is a usable API, because both Chrome and Safari seem to be able to hook into it without issue.

Plus, you can easily view any password that has been saved on someone's computer by going into Firefox preferences, which is a massive security hole in my book. Keychain does this right (albeit with some added inconvenience)

I'm sticking with Safari or Chrome for the forseable future. There's so much other stuff that just doesn't integrate properly with OSX. System spell checking in input fields (doesn't even respect the dictionary selection!), no keychain integration, no support for things like Afloat, certificates are managed separately to the rest of the system, no gesture support. Sorry guys; I want my apps to actually work with all the system-provided APIs, not clumsily side-step around them.

Firefox on the Mac has some features that are very handy and lacking in Safari. I can choose my own search engines, and then mark a word and have it looked up in that search engine on FF. Also, the arrow keys work in Google Street View, which makes navigation so much easier there. Enough reasons for me to stay on FF for now.

Huh?

Can't speak to the Street View navigation via keyboard in Safari since I no longer have Flash installed (the version included with Chromium's good enough for my purposes).

But while I'm all for everyone using the browser that works best for them instead of "it came with the computer", it can't be asking too much that you check whether your complaints are (still) valid before posting them.

I switched from Windows to Mac for my primary machine recently and assumed I'd be taking Firefox along with me. The lack of HiDPI support led me to start using Safari "only temporarily", I thought, while Firefox caught up on this basic feature. Several months later, and I've gotten pretty used to Safari and am missing Firefox less and less. At this rate, there won't be much reason for me to switch back to Firefox if and when they finally provide that HiDPI support.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ended-up getting pushed-off of FF.

Firefox on the Mac has some features that are very handy and lacking in Safari. I can choose my own search engines, and then mark a word and have it looked up in that search engine on FF. Also, the arrow keys work in Google Street View, which makes navigation so much easier there. Enough reasons for me to stay on FF for now.

Huh?

Can't speak to the Street View navigation via keyboard in Safari since I no longer have Flash installed (the version included with Chromium's good enough for my purposes).

But while I'm all for everyone using the browser that works best for them instead of "it came with the computer", it can't be asking too much that you check whether your complaints are (still) valid before posting them.

You showed exactly what the problem is. I should have explained better, i see. In Safari you can choose between 3 search engines that Apple thinks you need. In FF you can install many many search engines. I have them for Amazon, Wikipedia, Webster, and many others. Very handy.And I need Flash because many websites for computer games still use it, unfortunately. So I keep using Firefox until its dead, I think.

Firefox was my No. 1 browser in every OSX release up to Snow Leopard. But the lack of integration with the OS X UI has made me move on to Google Chrome. Google is doing an amazing job at integrating new OS features into their browser shorty after each release. +1 for that

About Firefox: It's not the lack of support for gestures and the built-in dictionary that bother me, but the very broken scrolling in Firefox that irritates me. Everywhere else throughout the OS, the scrolling is much better. Firefox does not really fit in.

I wouldn't be surprised if the share of Firefox users in OSX 10.7+ is much lower than Chrome and Safari. Has anybody seen statistics about that?

Adobe: "hey Apple, we really want to improve the experience on MacOS X, are you able to help us by providing certain low level API's so we can achieve that?"Apple: "Fuck you!"Adobe: "pardon?"Apple: "Fuck you, and fuck your Flash, h264/AAC/HTML5 is the future! bo yah!"Adobe: "But those technologies are limited at the moment"Apple: "Fuck you! stop annoying us, we're trying to change the world!"

What? That was the Adobe excuse back in the day regarding hardware video acceleration.

It has been DEBUNKED to death.

For one, Flash had problems far beyond hardware video acceleration: it was problematic in BASIC use on Mac. Non video use would frequently peg one's CPU to 100%.

Check how Adobe failed to even launch the same acceleration and enhanced performance in Flash for mobile devices (Android etc), and eventually abandoned it.

According to the same "party line", Flash was always "one release" from getting good on mobile. They never managed to do it, it was laggy, with choppy video, high CPU consumption and battery eating until the end.

They also abandoned Flash for Linux --left it to Google/Chrome.

Heck, they even put up a notice to their customers, that they'll focus on HTML5 for the future.

I don't really blame Adobe. The Flash codebase was acquired from Macromedia. By the time they got it it was a spaghetti mess of a codebase with tons of accumulated junk, that could not be adapted for modern devices.

(...)You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.) That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period. That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Looks to me like they're sinking all their brainpower into the Firefox Mobile OS. I guess because Meego needs a competitor. Or something.

It's more likely that they just don't have enough OS X developpers in the first place. Unlike Apple, Google or Microsoft, they don't have that much people and money to throw at what is still a minority of users. Yes, users, not customers, unless you've somehow paid for Firefox.

I was a long term Windows users and when I discovered firefox I was so happy... there followed years of playing around with plugins... in the end though firefox started to become a bloated pig... I switched to Chrome on windows and have been happy since... meanwhile @Home I have switched to a Mac last few years and Safari has become the staple.. Safari had a few issues during the Snow Leopard era (cache slowing things).. but it has all been rectified and it is all fine and cool now.. It is even better than Chrome on windows that I use at office.. (Chrome occasionally stutters when closing a lot of tabs)...

I really don't care firefox did or did not have support for Lion or any OSX versions going forward.. I will be watching how firefox competes with Chrome/IE on windows though.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens.

More correctly a niche marketshare, and being a osx user I consider firefox irrelevant here when Safari does such a good job. I do use firefox/chrome(current) on windows though just because the native browser is so mediocre on windows (yes yes IE10 is going to be like black magic).. so the article should really be about how important it is for 3rd party browsers to supplement platform ones for mediocre platforms(windows) with majority marketshare...

It's more likely that they just don't have enough OS X developpers in the first place. Unlike Apple, Google or Microsoft, they don't have that much people and money to throw at what is still a minority of users. Yes, users, not customers, unless you've somehow paid for Firefox.

In 2010 Mozilla had a revenue of more than $100m. Most of it came from Google by the way. I think they stopped publishing financial details in 2011, but they're not exactly a poor company, even if Mozilla does more than just Firefox.

Anyway, the point is that people use more than one platform and once you're off Firefox on one of them, other will follow soon. Syncing bookmarks, open tabs or even passwords between several devices is quite complicated if you use different browsers on them. So for me dropping Firefox on the Mac lead to me dropping it elsewhere very soon. I'm now using Chrome everywhere.

^+1 How about Arisian's talk about the browser for a change: where it's good & where it lets you down compared to others, enough with the browser wars already.(although I don't agree entirely on the "trying to turn it into a chrome clone" part, nowhere near as simple as that)

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.